Oracle's stretch goal for its applications?

“In fact, the highest application percentage of any company in any segment is sort of mid-20s. This generation will see a leader that’s much more material than that, and I volunteer us to do it.”

I would love to see that. Listening to Mark Hurd at Oracle OpenWorld I wrote

“After two decades of cloud applications, we have lots of choices in horizontal apps, very little in industry books of record. As a result, by my estimate, only 20% of enterprise apps have moved to the cloud. That’s in the US, the ratio is even lower in Europe and Asia. Unless Oracle and other vendors start investing in cloud versions of industry apps, Mark’s prediction that 80% will be in the cloud by 2025 looks very ambitious.”

I have studied the last two decades of enterprise software trends for my upcoming SAP Nation 3.0 book, and the best that can be said about Oracle application performance is it has been erratic. Here’s some of what my unfinished book describes about Oracle applications

“By many measures, Oracle should by now be the undisputed leader in enterprise applications. When Computer Associates was on a buying spree in the 90s, Oracle founder Larry Ellison had commented something along the lines of "every ecosystem needs a scavenger". Starting with the PeopleSoft acquisition in 2004, Oracle went on its own binge and claimed it was time for an "industry consolidation". They made significant acquisitions - PeopleSoft for US$10.3 billion, NetSuite for US$9.3 billion, Siebel for US$5.6 billion, Micros for US$5.3 billion, Hyperion for US$3.3 billion. Others like i-Flex, Portal and Retek brought them banking, telecom and retail applications. By 2006, they were loudly celebrating that they were "half way there" in developing their own next-gen Fusion cloud applications.

For all that, Oracle has done just ok. It has appeared more interested in going after Amazon for the cloud infrastructure and platform markets. That has yet to pay off - the top 4 cloud infrastructure players Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba have nearly 3/4 of that segment sown up. Around business applications, it has focused more on Workday and Salesforce with HCM and CRM functionality and not so much in manufacturing or other verticals where SAP has greater presence. Its NetSuite acquisition, while helping it increase traction with SMEs, has also led to some brand confusion around its own Fusion product line. While, it has launched an exciting autonomous version of its database - it calls it "self-driving", it has not brought a similar level of automation to enterprise applications.”

As the book says, the market is getting more fragmented by the day

“In 2000, enterprise tech vendors led by SAP, other ERP/CRM vendors and their SI and other partners were set to dominate the corporate technology landscape. Instead their share of the enterprise has steadily declined. They have missed out on contract manufacturing of smart products, digital marketing, cloud infrastructure, industrial internet, process automation and several vertical niches. Two decades ago, few of us had heard of Accenture Interactive, Foxconn or Google. Few of us considered Amazon or GE as tech vendors.”

and

“The next decade will allow SAP to further reinvent itself and take advantage of wave 2 in many of the markets it ignored in the last two decades. Can it? Will it have its own Manifest Destiny call to go from ‘sea to shining sea’?”

I would similarly welcome an Oracle more focused on business applications. The Western front is waiting to be tamed.

Comments

“In fact, the highest application percentage of any company in any segment is sort of mid-20s. This generation will see a leader that’s much more material than that, and I volunteer us to do it.”

I would love to see that. Listening to Mark Hurd at Oracle OpenWorld I wrote

“After two decades of cloud applications, we have lots of choices in horizontal apps, very little in industry books of record. As a result, by my estimate, only 20% of enterprise apps have moved to the cloud. That’s in the US, the ratio is even lower in Europe and Asia. Unless Oracle and other vendors start investing in cloud versions of industry apps, Mark’s prediction that 80% will be in the cloud by 2025 looks very ambitious.”

I have studied the last two decades of enterprise software trends for my upcoming SAP Nation 3.0 book, and the best that can be said about Oracle application performance is it has been erratic. Here’s some of what my unfinished book describes about Oracle applications

“By many measures, Oracle should by now be the undisputed leader in enterprise applications. When Computer Associates was on a buying spree in the 90s, Oracle founder Larry Ellison had commented something along the lines of "every ecosystem needs a scavenger". Starting with the PeopleSoft acquisition in 2004, Oracle went on its own binge and claimed it was time for an "industry consolidation". They made significant acquisitions - PeopleSoft for US$10.3 billion, NetSuite for US$9.3 billion, Siebel for US$5.6 billion, Micros for US$5.3 billion, Hyperion for US$3.3 billion. Others like i-Flex, Portal and Retek brought them banking, telecom and retail applications. By 2006, they were loudly celebrating that they were "half way there" in developing their own next-gen Fusion cloud applications.

For all that, Oracle has done just ok. It has appeared more interested in going after Amazon for the cloud infrastructure and platform markets. That has yet to pay off - the top 4 cloud infrastructure players Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Alibaba have nearly 3/4 of that segment sown up. Around business applications, it has focused more on Workday and Salesforce with HCM and CRM functionality and not so much in manufacturing or other verticals where SAP has greater presence. Its NetSuite acquisition, while helping it increase traction with SMEs, has also led to some brand confusion around its own Fusion product line. While, it has launched an exciting autonomous version of its database - it calls it "self-driving", it has not brought a similar level of automation to enterprise applications.”

As the book says, the market is getting more fragmented by the day

“In 2000, enterprise tech vendors led by SAP, other ERP/CRM vendors and their SI and other partners were set to dominate the corporate technology landscape. Instead their share of the enterprise has steadily declined. They have missed out on contract manufacturing of smart products, digital marketing, cloud infrastructure, industrial internet, process automation and several vertical niches. Two decades ago, few of us had heard of Accenture Interactive, Foxconn or Google. Few of us considered Amazon or GE as tech vendors.”

and

“The next decade will allow SAP to further reinvent itself and take advantage of wave 2 in many of the markets it ignored in the last two decades. Can it? Will it have its own Manifest Destiny call to go from ‘sea to shining sea’?”

I would similarly welcome an Oracle more focused on business applications. The Western front is waiting to be tamed.